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EPA Proposes New Protections Against Mercury and Other Hazardous Air Pollutants
Today, the EPA proposed strengthening protections against heavy metals, mercury and other hazardous air pollution emitted from power plants, protecting vulnerable communities from some of the most dangerous types of air pollution.
In 2012, EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards set technology-based emissions standards for a variety of hazardous air pollutants, including mercury, a neurotoxin particularly harmful to children and pregnant mothers. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to periodically review–and, if necessary, strengthen–air toxics standards to ensure they are based upon the latest available technology.
In today’s proposal, EPA indicates that by adopting cost-effective, readily available pollution controls, coal-fired plants can substantially reduce their emissions of heavy metals like chromium and arsenic. EPA also proposes reducing mercury emissions from lignite-burning plants in Texas and North Dakota, which produce especially large quantities of mercury pollution.
Since its implementation, the 2012 MATS rule has led to huge reductions in pollutants like mercury, arsenic, and hydrochloric acid that would otherwise expose communities to mercury-contaminated fish as well as dirtier air and water, with mercury emissions from power plants declining by 91 percent between 2010 and 2020.
The proposal will be available for public comment for 60 days following its publication in the Federal Register.
In response, Sierra Club Senior Director of Energy Campaigns Holly Bender released the following statement:
"As a mother, my children are my top priority, and I am deeply worried about the serious health risks that mercury pollution poses to them. There is no safe level of mercury exposure, and while we have made significant progress advancing clean energy, coal-fired power plants remain one of the largest sources of mercury pollution. It's alarming to think that toxic pollutants from coal plants can build up in places like Lake Michigan where we go camping and swimming in the summer, and where people fish to feed their families. Today, we applaud the Biden Administration's commitment to prioritizing children's health, and we urge the EPA to quickly and decisively implement strong mercury and air toxics standards. Our kids deserve to live and play in a healthy, safe environment, and our leaders must do everything in their power to make that a reality."
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
Appealing SNAP Ruling, Trump Is Determined to Make Sure Poor Americans Don’t Get Food Assistance
"The administration’s legal maneuver sends a clear and devastating message: that the well-being of America’s most vulnerable is not important," said the president of the Food Research & Action Center.
Nov 07, 2025
The Trump administration will not give poor Americans food assistance without a fight.
Instead of following a federal judge’s ruling Thursday that ordered officials to release Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds to 42 million Americans by the next day, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked an appeals court to immediately block the ruling on Friday.
The Trump administration has argued that due to the government shutdown, the SNAP program, which provides food assistance to those making 130% of the federal poverty line or less, functionally does not exist.
In an emergency request to the 1st Circuit Court of the United States, the DOJ called the lower court's ruling, "unprecedented" and argued that it makes "a mockery of the separation of powers.”
Furthering what has been widely interpreted as an effort to pressure Democrats to cave on their demands in the government shutdown, the appeal stated that the lapse in SNAP funding was caused by “congressional failure, and... can only be solved by congressional action.”
US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island, in his second ruling against the administration's efforts to choke off SNAP benefits, wrote the previous day that the administration's plan to partially fund the program was insufficient. The previous week, McConnell had ruled that the administration had to tap a $5 billion contingency fund to fund the program and make up for the shortfall by drawing from other sources.
The administration agreed to use the contingency fund but offered a plan that fell several billion dollars short of fully funding the program and would have amounted to a 61% benefit cut for the average SNAP recipient, leaving millions without benefits altogether, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
While the administration has sought to pin the blame for funding lapses on Democrats in Congress and has asserted that its hands are tied, McConnell described the administration's maneuvering as a deliberate political stunt.
"This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided," McConnell said. “The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP... It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here."
He added that Trump had essentially telegraphed his plan to defy the court order over the weekend, writing on Truth Social that “SNAP payments will be given only when the government opens.”
This, along with messages on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) website blaming Democrats for the lapse in funding, McConnell suggested, was evidence that “SNAP benefits are being withheld for political reasons.”
“Children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” McConnell said. “This should never happen in America.”
More than 1 in 8 Americans rely on the SNAP program, 39% of whom are children. As the CBPP report explained, families with children would likely be those hardest hit under Trump's partial funding proposal.
"Nearly 1.2 million SNAP households with roughly 4.9 million people—roughly 1 in 9 SNAP recipients—will receive zero benefits because their normal benefit amount is less than the planned benefit reduction," it says. "Only one-or two-person households receive a minimum benefit under SNAP rules, leaving some households with three or more members—which are primarily households with children—at risk of receiving nothing."
The USDA has also issued a warning to grocery stores telling them it is illegal for them to offer special discounts to SNAP recipients hurt by the freeze, even though the government is allowed to grant them waivers. On Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a bill that would allow grocery stores to voluntarily offer discounts to SNAP recipients whenever their benefits are affected by a government shutdown.
“Donald Trump is the most powerful person in the world,” Wyden said. “Only a monster would use that power to deny help to millions of families that don’t know where their next meal is coming from.”
As the CPBB has noted, contrary to its claims, nothing is stopping the Trump administration from transferring funds from other food assistance programs to fund SNAP fully. It has already done this twice to sustain the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which a court ruled was legal.
"Instead of using the funding that has been readily available to feed people, this administration continues to fight to deny tens of millions from accessing the nutrition they need," said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center. "For some unfathomable reason, the Trump administration wants to punish the 42 million people, including children, working parents, older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans, who rely on SNAP to put food on the table."
She added that "at a time when food insecurity is rising due to increasing grocery prices, the administration’s legal maneuver sends a clear and devastating message: that the well-being of America’s most vulnerable is not important."
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Medicare Advantage, Privatized Medicaid Could Cost Americans $2 Trillion Extra Over Next Decade
"If the administration were serious about curbing waste and inefficiency, it would start by reducing the diversion of public funds to these corporate intermediaries," argues a new paper.
Nov 07, 2025
US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress took a sledgehammer to Medicaid over the summer, justifying the unprecedented cuts by falsely claiming the program that provides health coverage to tens of millions of low-income Americans is overrun with waste and abuse.
But a new paper published Friday in the journal Health Affairs argues that if the administration actually wanted to target waste, fraud, and abuse, it would have been much better off taking aim at Medicare Advantage (MA) and Medicaid privatization.
The paper's authors estimate that overpayments to MA plans—which are funded by the government and run by for-profit insurers—and private Medicaid managed care will likely cost US taxpayers a total of $1.92 trillion over the next 10 years.
"Ending that waste would inflict losses on private insurers' shareholders and executives (the CEO of the largest MA firm made $26.3 million last year). But patients, not just government coffers, might gain," wrote Adam Gaffney, Danny McCormick, Steffie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein.
"Even Congress' trillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid and food assistance amount to little more than half of the potential savings from de-privatizing Medicaid and Medicare," they added. "Reclaiming those funds would require reversing the decades-long trend of outsourcing to profit-seeking intermediaries and restoring Medicare and Medicaid as efficiently administered public programs."
Far from aggressively taking on Medicare Advantage fraud, the Trump administration handed MA plans a major gift earlier this year by approving an average federal payment increase of roughly 5.1%—more than double the 2.2% increase proposed by the Biden administration in January.
The authors of the new paper noted that the huge raise for MA plans, which are notorious for denying necessary care in pursuit of ever-larger profits, will add $25 billion in waste to the US healthcare system next year alone.
"If the administration were serious about curbing waste and inefficiency," they wrote, "it would start by reducing the diversion of public funds to these corporate intermediaries."
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Army of 5,000+ Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Has 'Stranglehold on Climate Action' at COP30: Report
"We must dismantle the corporate architecture of impunity and kick these big polluters out of policymaking," said one campaigner. "Our future cannot be written by those who profit from its destruction."
Nov 07, 2025
Big polluters led by the fossil fuel industry—which knowingly caused the climate crisis—are expanding their outsize presence and influence at the key event meant to tackle the planetary emergency, a report published ahead of this month's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil revealed.
The report, published Friday by the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition, notes that "over 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN climate negotiations in just four years, with 90 of the corporations they represent responsible for nearly 60% of all global oil and gas production."
The analysis sounds the alarm on the "staggering scale of fossil fuel industry presence at the very negotiations that must urgently phase out their products" in order to meet the goal of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5°C as promised in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.
The world is failing to deliver upon that promise, and according to the report, "the primary reason for this failure is no secret—big polluters continue to be granted outsized presence, access, and influence at the very negotiations meant to address the crisis they knowingly caused."
"COP30 is set to proceed with effectively zero protections against interference in place."
"Among the world's largest fossil fuel corporations, Shell sent a total of 37 lobbyists to COP26-COP29, BP sent 36, ExxonMobil sent 32, and Chevron sent 20," according to KBPO. "These figures do not account for additional lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry's associated trade groups."
"As a result, they maintain a carefully orchestrated stranglehold on climate action, which consequently continues to fall way short of the strong and just global response we know we urgently need," the report states.
KBPO warned: "Despite the scale of fossil fuel industry presence revealed by this data, COP30 is set to proceed with effectively zero protections against interference in place. Ahead of COP30 happening in Belém from November 10-21, more than 225 organizations and networks around the world wrote to the COP30 presidency asking them to commit to a polluter-free COP by ensuring no fossil fuel ties or sponsorship and by advancing an Accountability Framework that protects the integrity and legitimacy of the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change].
"In response," the report's authors lamented, "little to no meaningful action has been taken to protect these talks from the fossil fuel industry and other big polluters."
KBPO partner Fiona Hauke of Urgewald, an environmental and human rights advocacy group based in Germany, said in a statement Friday that “over the last three years, oil and gas companies that lobbied at COP have spent more than $35 billion each year looking for new oil and gas fields, exacerbating the problem the nations of the world had gathered to solve."
“These companies have defended their fossil interests by watering down climate action for years," Hauke added. "As we head towards COP30, we demand transparency and accountability: Keep polluters out of climate talks and make them pay for a just energy transition.”
Nerisha Baldevu, a KBPO member from groundWork/Friends of the Earth South Africa, asserted: "Corporate power is at the root of the climate crisis. Fossil, mining, and agribusiness giants are seizing our global institutions and turning climate negotiations into trade expos for polluters."
"For climate justice, we must dismantle the corporate architecture of impunity and kick these big polluters out of policymaking," Baldevu stressed. "Our future cannot be written by those who profit from its destruction."
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